Los Angeles DA Gascon Sued – Again – By His Staff

The Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys (“ADDA”), the union representing nearly 800 line prosecutors in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, has filed an unfair labor practice charge against their boss – current DA George Gascón – for false, anti-union statements he made in an interview with a newspaper group.

At issue are Gascon’s statements published last week in the papers owned by the Southern California News Group (basically all of the remaining dailies in and around LA that aren’t called the Times.)

The article, by editorial board member Larry Wilson, is an endorsement of Gascon and contains the usual “he just needs to communicate better” and “everyone else is wrong about Gascon” claptrap.

But it is one specific passage that has the ADDA so irked up that they are taking Gascon to task:

“In their work against me, the union had to raise their dues twice and now a third time — they spend it on the campaign against me, on recalls, on lawsuits. But … we are seeing cracks” in the internal opposition. “We gave tests for DA 4,” a step up for junior prosecutors. “and the union told people not to take the exam, and over 300 people took the exam. The union refused my offer to give raises to many of our attorneys,” because they didn’t want him to have that victory.

The union states, point blank, that none of that is true and by lying about the union Gascon has violated at least a pair of state labor laws, including  the Employee Relations Ordinance, Section 5.040.20 (a) and (b), and the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act.

The union is asking for a cease and desist order to keep Gascon from repeating the claims.

“District Attorney Gascon’s statements are utter lies made up from whole cloth, without a grain of substance to them, which only underscores the insult to the Los Angeles County Employee Relations Ordinance… and hearkens back to the days when anti-labor thugs used lead pipes instead of words to assault labor policy and labor unions,” the ADDA’s unfair labor practice charge alleges,” states the complaint.

For example, Gascon has not offered pay raises and wouldn’t be able to legally (civil service rules and such) do so anyway.  The union admits it raised its dues, but only once and specifically to raise the funds needed to fight Gascon.

“There’s only one reason for Gascón, or someone like him, to lie about the ADDA’s activities, and that’s to undermine the union’s credibility in the eyes of its members,” said ADDA Vice President Ryan Erlich. “If Gascón wants to blame someone for his failures over the last three years, he should blame the guy staring back at him in the mirror.”  

The union has endorsed its former vice president, Eric Siddall, in the quickly approaching  March 5 primary.  The top two finishers then face off head-to-head in November.

The field, as noted, is extremely crowded and polls are showing huge swaths of LA voters remain undecided. But they also show Gascon intensely disliked by a solid majority and support for him hovering in the 15-20% range, meaning the race for the top two spots is currently a jump ball.

Attempts to reach either the DA’s office or the Gascon campaign for comment were unsuccessful.  However, it should be noted that ADDA released the news at about 4:50 on a Friday afternoon, limiting potential availability.

That being said, the responses would almost certainly have been “we can’t talk about pending legal issues” from the DA’s office and, well, nothing from the campaign as they have literally yet to even return an email from the Globe thus far.